Over the years, I have evaluated gear for magazines including Wired, Popular Science, and National Geographic Adventure, where I was a senior editor. Slant leg canopies use less material and have less structural integrity than straight leg canopies. That’s why when you dive into online reviews, you see slant leg tents that have broken at different connection points, and customers complaining that it failed after only a few uses. Is Walmart’s Ozark Trail brand a true sleeper, putting out products that deserve much more attention among outdoorsmen? With that question being floated, we decided to travel down the path of discovery and start to take a closer look at Ozark Trail and some of their products. We just completed a review of the Ozark Trail Tumbler line, which is not only budget friendly but also well performing.
Like the REI model, the L.L.Bean tent uses polyester (ripstop, in this case), which is more resistant to UV damage and absorbs less moisture than nylon by weight. The Woodlands Screen House also has the advantage of eight guylines, whereas the Screen House Shelter includes none. In addition, this model has the same bug-deterring flap of fabric along the base as the REI tent, but while the REI’s flap is about 9 inches wide, the L.L.Bean’s flap is about 10.5 inches wide. Several REI reviewers who bought both the tent and the fly for rain protection note that the fly has only two walls, leaving much of the tent exposed. The add-on fly for our runner-up pick, the L.L.Bean Woodlands Screen House, offers four-walled protection, though it’s also more than twice as expensive.
After all, you can find plenty of smaller and less-expensive items to help you fight bugs, guard against the sun, and shrug off rain. Our favorite canopy tent is a simply designed, comfortable shelter that offers protection from bugs, sun, and rain. Most of the cheap 10×10 slant leg tents weigh about 25 pounds, so you can assume the material is extremely thin and delicate, making the tent susceptible to breaking after minimal use, especially if you’re using it in windier conditions. It’s also important to note ozark trail backpack that nearly all recreational-grade tents — no matter if they’re straight leg or slant leg — use thin steel frames, which are significantly weaker than anodized aluminum frames of similar weight. Aluminum tent legs not only have a larger leg diameter (1” for steel vs. 2” for aluminum) but the thickness (or gauge) of aluminum is twice that of steel. That team is also pretty helpful to have when our marketing team needs to explain why a straight leg canopy has more structural integrity than a slant leg canopy.
Most new tents incorporate this ventilated canopy design to increase airflow and reduce the trapping of hot air, helping to keep those in the shade cooler and more comfortable. The most popular product in their line is the 10×10 Instant Slant Leg Tent with a blue canopy top. It is made with a steel construction frame and polyester material for the canopy, which is in line with just about every shade tent on the market today. The frame is that of a pyramid structure, which are generally found in all value brand canopy tents as they require less material to manufacture vs. that of a full truss system and as a result can keep the price lower. Since 2015, I’ve tested camping shelters and large car-camping tents on weekend trips involving more than a dozen families, and I have talked to dozens more about their tent travails.
The tent roof is made of polyester taffeta treated with a DWR (durable water repellent) coating. The walls are made of fine no-see-um nylon mesh edged with polyester taffeta. This polyester material is less susceptible to UV damage than the nylon that previous versions of this tent incorporated, but it generally has a feel that is not quite as soft. Despite the change in fabric, this REI shelter still weighs just 13 pounds, several pounds less than many others of this type.
We tested the Coleman 10 × 10 Instant Screened Canopy and Walmart’s Ozark Trail 10′ × 10′ Instant Screen House during our first round of testing in the winter and spring of 2016. These two shelters are the same size and shape (7-foot peak height, 17 pounds) with an almost identical design. The cap-like roofs on both models provided far less shade than we wanted, especially in the beating desert sun.